First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.Mahatma Gandhi

I Believe that if all of my students are to be successful I need to teach differently.

I do not believe that students of today learn differently than students of the past.

It is my opinion that previous models of instruction have not always reached all students.

All of my students deserve a high quality education and I have altered my approach to instruction in order to achieve that goal.

I use the flipped model of instruction in my classroom. I leverage technology to allow students to access content on their own time. We use class time to build relationships and collaborate. We will use inquiry and problem solving strategies in class to make our content more engaging. We will embrace mistakes. We will celebrate learning and effort more than grades. We will write reflectively to assimilate new knowledge and create real understanding.

We will use these and other strategies to learn physics. The world around us will become the sandbox we play in as we learn to ask interesting questions about why the world works as it does. We will learn to identify relationships that exist in nature. We will investigate those relationships using a variety of models and abstractions. In the end we learn more about our world and hopefully see it from a new perspective. We will acquire skills that will serve us well in our future regardless of which profession we pursue.

Join me for an exciting year as we redefine and reimagine what school and education mean to you.

Howdy!

My name is Gary Strickland. There are a couple of things you might notice immediately. First, I'm an Aggie. Second, our high school mascot is a bluecat - no not the fish. A bluecat was a prehistoric sabre tooth cat (at least that's the story we are going with). I recently made the leap to high school after teaching 8th grade science for nine years. My current high school assignment is IPC (Integrated Physics & Chemistry) and Physics. I am very excited about the opportunity to serve the students of Coleman High School.I have several ambitious goals for my classroom. Coleman is fortunate to be a 1 to 1 school with all students having a laptop. The classrooms are also filled with wonderful technology. My goal is to leverage this technology in a way to maximize student learning and hopefully make school a fun and exciting place for students.Class highlights will be: 1) A "flipped" classroom 2) A strong online presence for student support 3) Strong support of literacy and the Common Core 4) An exciting blend of technology and hands on investigations